In this one... The Allied fleet moves in to save the Normandy and repay the debt.

BACKGROUND MUSIC"Guardians of the Universe" by Future World Music: [link]

AFTERWORD

40 more episodes ahead of us!

And so we have finally arrived at the mid-season finale of Marauder Shields. Half of our story has already been told, with a very eventful series of developments ahead. Prepare to discover the origins of the Reapers (covered in a sufficiently lovecraftian mixture of truths, lies, deception and utter madness), to see Shepard find out what's at the end of the narrow path and to bring this little fan-made alternative ending to a definitive close. From Miranda and Jack, to Nihlus and Anderson, from Javik and Zaeed, to Wrex and... Shepard - all your favorites will be back to close their respectful arcs and kick some ass. Expect a few twists to arrive and a few deaths to (hopefully) choke you up.

In the meantime, this episode will be followed by a short, one-month hiatus, with the next comic arriving at around 7th to 10th of January. So, uh, I guess the hiatus is actually 2 weeks long, since our usual publishing schedule is bi-weekly. Go figure.

I will be sure to fill the time between then and now with some extra content, the second part of our discussion club and a few cool things to sweeten it all up a bit. The announcement for the opening of the Koobismo.com website should be popping up soon, with the website fully operational from January. Oh, and be sure to follow our official team twitter at @KoobismoCom - all dates and announcements will be released via that channel, with @Koobismo remaining my personal twitter handle.

The hiatus is connected to me traveling to my family during Christmas time (since my laptop burned up recently I have no way of working on the comics on the road anymore) and to my recent sad necessity of picking up a second job for the next few weekends (or a bit longer), to cover a few suckerpunching bills and highly unscheduled expenses.

The upside is that I will no longer say "no" to any donations you'd like to throw my way (though they will be treated as donating to our "next project after MS" fund), and also will be available for any "mercenary-type" jobs you, your boss or your friends may require my expertise for. From writing to game design, from making a few prints to helping you out with your projects - I'm available to be your hired-gun during my after-work time and weekends.

As for discussing this episode - special thanks go to AssaultSloth who helped me out immensely with his 3d sculpting talent and overal gentlemanliness, creating the Batarian ship from scratch and heavily modifying my Salarian Cruiser concept, producing the awesome little bugger we see in the comic. Sloth's the man.

Oh, and one more thing you might have noticed - "Dum Spiro Spero" tricked you into thinking that Hackett's speech happened after EDI and Joker said their goodbyes. In fact, it happened during that time. I really wanted Hackett's "we're going full in" to be a separate episode, without going in and out of Normandy's frames, and hence decided to use the technique of time desynchronization. Hopefully no serious confusion will arise from this.

And that's it for now. Thank you for being here. Keep reading and remember: hope is alive!

GENERAL INFORMATION

This is an ongoing story providing an alternative fan-made ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, with our own game-changing maverick transforming the course of history: Marauder Shields. Be sure to start reading at episode 6. Special thanks to MichelKobayashi and my awesome team, especially our editor - AdoreeLyssa!

Hope is Alive!

[The Mass Effect universe, its design and characters are owned by BioWare/EA Productions. This is a work of parody and fan-fiction, created under the terms of fair use. Special thanks to BioWare for creating the world we all love and care for!]

P.S. Help me spread this series around - retweet, send out links, share this with your friends and post it on your facebook wall!

I thought Normandy was past the reaper blockade? They just FTLed through the reaper fleet?Also Harbinger must be hated even among reapers. No reaper bothered to help when half the alliance fleet mobbed him.

If you follow the events presented in MS step by step, you'll soon find the answer. It begins with the setup seen in ME3's Priority Earth finale - Harbinger has descended from orbit with selected units, the Normandy had got past the blockade, while the battle in orbit began for good. Harbinger lands by the beam, yada dada, the difference begins in the very first few episodes, as the Normandy turns back and attachs Harbinger with additional help, inflicting almost no damage, but catching Harbinger's attention - who begins his pursuit of the vessel. Joker's flying away from London, taking Harbinger with him, on his tail, focusing on the Normandy with the very characteristic - yet weirdly un-robotic - rage and obsession seen previously in ME2. Normandy gets back into orbit, discovering that the battle has moved further on, with the lines collapsing and the fleet encountering serious problems - and becomes an easy target, with Harbinger taking it solo and getting an inch from destroying it completely. However, as the Normandy is about to be pulverized, something cracks inside good ol' Hackett (the reason for which you can also see in MS, step by step ), and he decides that the battle tactics assumed prior to the engagement are built around principles and rules that the enemy can not just follow, but also predict. He gives an order of compassion and pride - a seemingly illogical one - which leads us to the episode seen here. An order that catches both Harby and the Reaper fleet off guard.

lets be honest, I'm sure some one that wrote the ending to ME3 is seeing this, i ask you sir(s) do you feel.... incompetent ???? do you think Koob has pretty much done a 10000 times better job than you???

and bioware! don't you feel that maybe some new staff changes are in order!! some pretty talented people out there, maybe instead of wasting 10 billion dollars on famous VA you can hire talented people to make more content for your games!

at any rate I have commented too much, its hard to mask my rage at Bioware and my love for this comic, keep up the good work guys and god speed.

When you believe yourself to be indestructible or immortal, you stop trying to defend yourself. Which means your completely unprepared when someone, anyone defies you. It simply becomes a matter of waiting long enough for someone to prove you wrong. The Reaper's defeat was assured the moment they said to themselves 'No one can stop us.' In short, if the Reaper's were real and did actually try to harvest us, we might not be able to stop them. The next cycle might not be able to stop them or the next ones or the next ones. But they would be defeated because, quite simply, we are better than them.

Next to the Illusive Man, Harbinger was probably the closest thing to a main antagonist for the series. The fact that you never go up against him, face-to-face, irked me like you wouldn't believe. This is what I wanted to see. This is why I did everything in my power to keep as many people as I could alive throughout the course of three games. So that they could see this. You did even better by making it so that, instead of just seeing it happen, the're pulling the trigger. At first I thought having Shepard unconscious throughout this comic was just a way to keep from commiting to a single permutation of the character when there is countless versions of him/her. But it's really for the best because... Shepard's already done his/her job. He/She is literally the 'shepard' of all of these species, all of these people. It was his/her job to bring them all together for this final fight. And now they are.

I just realized. It's a bit strange that the volus is wearing his environmental suit on a ship specially made for and by volus. I guess it would have interrupted the flow of the scene if we had to pause and say: "What the hell is that thing?"

But I think they're just used to it... I mean...the Quarians neither put their suits off at any time - you can even see them wearing their suits on the recording of Tali's father's research ship, which could have easily been cleared such that they could live there...right? other than that, I'm sure what weakness the Volus' exactly suffer from, thus it would depend...if it's a weakness of the immune system, then I suppose they could think about having to land on earth to support the troops there... and it wouldn't play out handy if everyone on the ship would have to put their suits back on for an emergency landing, right? or so I guess